Rzewski
Plays

There are
events in everyone's life that are unforgettable---the death of someone
you love, say, or the first time you have sex or eat sushi. For lovers
of new music, hearing American composer Frederic Rzewski's piano masterpiece
The
People United Will Never Be Divided for first time falls into that
category.

Originally
commissioned by and written for Ursula Oppens as a piece to commemorate
the American bicentennial, The People... is a simple and haunting
Chilean political protest song upon which the 64-year-old Rzewski (pronounced
ZHEV-ski) developed a series of 36 variations of jaw-dropping originality.
For nearly an hour, Rzewski astonishes the ear with sounds that you
simply have not heard before.

In what
is certainly one of the most important and welcome new releases of the
year, Nonesuch has just issued Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works, 1975-1999,
aseven-disc
box set that contains all of the master's "greatest hits." (Alas,
we're not on Nonesuch's review copy list so we had to save up to buy a
copy. Fortunately, Rzewski must have demanded that they keep the
price down; Amazon
has the monster box for $45.99.)

Born in
Westfield, Massachusetts in 1938, Rzewski studied composition with giants
of American 20th-century music, including Randall Thompson, Walter Piston,
Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. He became politically active in the
1960s, and produced works frankly inspired by contemporary social issues,
such as musical settings of a letter from a prisoner at Attica and a soldier
in Vietnam.

Long an
expatriate, Rzewski went to Italy in 1960, where he studied with Luigi
Dallapiccola and met Severino Gazzelloni, with whom he performed in a number
of concerts, thus beginning a career as a performer of new piano music.
Rzewski's early friendship with Christian Wolff and David Behrman, and
(through Wolff) his acquaintance with John Cage and David Tudor strongly
influenced his development in both composition and performance. In Rome
in the mid-sixties, together with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum,
he formed the free improvisation group Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome.
He later toured as a pianist with Karlheinz Stockhausen although he was
a close friend of and musical co-conspirator of British radical Cornelius
Cardew, who once wrote a book titled "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism."
Since 1977, Rzewski has been Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire
Royal de Musique in Liege, Belgium.

Rzewski
is a formidable pianist as well as an audacious stage perfomer. His
32-minute "oratorio" for solo piano, De Profundis, he writes,
"demands a combination of virtuoso technique and a total lack of inhibition
on stage, thus virtually guaranteeing that no mediocre or conventional
performer will dare to go near it."

Composed
in 1991, it requires the pianist to simultaneously play and recite a deeply
moving Oscar Wilde letter written while Wilde was jailed for homosexual
practices.

Two discs
are devoted to the first four parts of The Road, a "novel"
for solo piano, still in progress. Divided into "miles" -- short pieces
intended to work like chapters -- the full score when completed next year
will last around eight hours. The piece is filled puncuated by raggedy
marches and train whistles, as Rzewski plays and sings and even reads in
Russian from Gogol's "The Nose."

A 45-minute
Piano Sonata from 1991 pieces together fragments of the medieval plainchant
L'Homme
Armé with Ring Around the Rosy,Santa Claus Is Coming
to Town, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, John Lennon's
Give
Peace a Chance and Three Blind Mice in a dazzling first movement.
The second movement is a long set of variations on Taps. The final
movement is 27 variations on the plainchant tune.

For Rzewski
fans, the appearance of this Nonesuch treasure trove is an occasion to
celebrate--better than sex or sushi (or at least sushi). For first-time
Rzewski listeners, it's a chance to get to know the 21st century's Franz
Liszt and hear some music you'll never forget.

WE
ARE THE WORLD: We call it, for want of a better term, World Music,
and it is rapidly invading and subverting every other genre. The tenth
London Jazz Festival, which opens this weekend, is approximately two-thirds
World. World Music represents a process that is as old as music itself
- a meeting of two sonorities that yields new harmonic energy. It's the
way music has always grown, and there are signs that World may be leading
white men's music, both commercial and classical, out of protracted impotence."
La Scena Musicale 11/14/02

WHEN
IT ALL CHANGED IN NEW YORK: It's possible to consider the history of
music in the 20th Century in many ways, but, given the increasing globalization
of culture, geographic boundaries have become less and less relevant. There
was a time, though, in New York, at the middle of the century, when the
course of music history changed forever. The Guardian (UK) 11/15/02

ALL
THAT MONEY AND THEY STILL DON'T MAKE A SOUND: "Sotheby’s will be auctioning
two important manuscripts relating to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde on December
6. The autographed libretto of Tristan und Isolde – which Sotheby’s describes
as ‘written in Wagner’s beautiful calligraphic hand’ – is estimated to
fetch between £200,000-£300,000. This price is expected to
be eclipsed, however, by the autographed manuscript of the Wesendonck Lieder,
also included in the sale, with an estimated price of £500,000-£700,000."
Gramophone 11/12/02

VIRGIN
STRAD SOLD: A Stradivarius violin, thought never to have been played
in public concert before, sold at auction this week for £608,750.
"There are thought to be only 500 remaining examples of Stradivari's skills
and the Christie's violin was made when he was 82 years old." BBC 11/13/02

VENICE
OPERA HOUSE'S REOPENING DATE ANNOUNCED: Venice's famed La Fenice Opera
House will reopen December 14, 2003, says the city's mayor. The theatre
burned down during renovations in 1996, and repairs have been clowed by
scandal and corruption. Andante (AP) 11/12/02

SAY
HELLO TO OPERABOBB: The internet is great for amassing huge amounts
of information, accessible with just a few clicks. But it also gives people
with a passion and expertise a way of sharing it with the world. Looking
for opera tips? Say hi to Operabobb, a Northern California opera lover
with an e-mail newsletter that dishes on all things opera. San Jose Mercury-News
11/12/02

SOPHIE'S
CHOICE, THE OPERA: Creating art about the Holocaust is always a dangerous
proposition. Few subjects in history are so divisive, so horrifying, and
so starkly antithetical to objective analysis as the wholesale slaughter
of Europe's Jewish population, and the events of that dark time often seem
to defy any attempt to fit them to traditional artistic mediums. "Yet this
is what Nicholas Maw - whose adaptation of William Styron's novel Sophie's
Choice will be performed at Covent Garden next month - has bravely attempted."
The Observer (UK) 11/17/02

BUY
YOUR OWN SYMPHONY! Commissioning a piece of music isn't nearly as hard
or expensive as you might think. In fact, you don't even have to know anything
at all about music! Just open that checkbook, and tell the composer to
write you something purty, preferably in a major key... The Telegraph (UK)
11/16/02

MUSIC
IS THE BEST ANESTHESIA, APPARENTLY: When pianist and composer Terese
Kaptur needed surgery recently, she decided to forego the hospital's offer
of general anesthesia. In place of the knockout drops, Kaptur substituted
a mild local anesthetic combined with the music of a Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra violist who stood at her bedside playing long, steady tones.
(No viola jokes, please.) The doctors performing the procedure were stunned,
but reported that Ms. Kaptur was completely calm despite the intense pain
such a procedure should cause. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 11/14/02

VANSKA
IN THE WINGS: What is it about Finland and music these days? Some the
best, hottest young conductors are Finnish, and they're taking oversome
of the world's leading orchestras. "There must be more conductors of international
class per capita in Finland than anywhere else in the world." Is Osmo Vanska,
recently appointed music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, the next
Finnish star? Washington Post 11/17/02

Combining
the look and feel of a computer games with the sound of serious contemporary
music, 3D Music is the latest in a string of inventive projects by the
ensemble, now known as one of the UK's premier new music groups.

Users
can explore a three dimensional virtual envirnment, collecting and manipulating
objects and the experiencing the music they make.

The
project was funded with help from the Arts Council of England's Collaborative
Arts Unit.

For
more information, and to experience the work for yourself, visit
3D
Music

Part
2 A celebration of 20 years of music commissioned by Meet The Composer

Join NewMusicBox
for Part 2 of the monstrous webcast of The Works, a 12-hour long marathon
concert celebrating 20 years of American music commissioned by Meet the
Composer.

One
of the great pleasures of CD collecting in recent years has been the reemergence
of an enormous amount of recorded Villas-Lobos' chamber music. Impossibly
lush melodies, exotic rhythms, otherworld spirtiuality in extremely vivid
performances. Music to love and listen to over and over again.

There
was a time, in the 1920s, when Ornstein's name was mentioned in the same
breath as Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and he lived long enough (he died
earlier this year at 109) to see his music come and go in fashion
several times. One thing is certain: he has never had--and
probably never will have again--as formidable and effective an advocate
as Marc-Andre Hamelin, the brilliant Canadian pianist, who makes a convincing
case that Ornstein's early admirers had it right--he belongs in the same
company as Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

Christina
Fong is among the most adventuresome of modern violin and viola players
having lovingly committed to CD modern masterpieces by John Cage, Morton
Feldman, Alan Hovhaness and now the Spanish composer Maria de Alvear's
glorious extended 1994 meditation for viola. Engaging and important
music from one of the most inventive of the independent CD labels. OrgreOgress
Productions

Harry
Partch was iconoclastic American composer, musical theorist, philosophic
instrument builder, raconteur, artist and hobo and it is Partch's king
of the road life from which Dean Drummond and Newband draw the inspiration
for The Wayward. "Found" hobo poems serve as fodder for Patch style "just
intonation" or what might be called American plainsong.

Here's
something irrestible to collectors--the first release of the long awaited
recording of Csaba Erdelyi's Restoration and Orchestration of the Bartok
Viola Concerto, which was left in an uncompleted form when the composer
died in 1945. For many years the only way in which the work could
be heard was in the completion by Hungarian Tibor Serly, which nobody much
liked.

Erdelyi
has worked for many years on a better restoration and has produced,
after exhaustive study and consultation, a number of interim 'completions'.
Now he has arrived at his definitive version. The trick is that for
copyright reasons, the CD is not available in this Hemisphere but can be
ordered directly from New Zealand. Click on the cover picture for
details.

George
Rochberg was born in 1918, and became one of North America's most
influential composition teachers. A rabid atonalist Rochberg abandoned
that stance following the death of a son and began to construct his music
out of both tonal and atonal languages. In so doing, he dramatically reinterpreted
the notion of stylistic uniformity that had been a hallmark of the Western
aesthetic since antiquity. By including these diverse musics, Rochberg
believed that he had expanded the emotional range that modern music was
able to express. He had found a contemporary language that could both bear
the weight of despair and point to transcendence. And—unlike either strict
serialism or aleatoric composition—it was a language that was pointedly
individualistic.

Our
usual monthly bow to English country estates, chintz and big slobbering
dogs. Every culture has some composer or artist or writer who is
famous for being unknown: E.J Moeran is England's claim to unsung
genius.

Delightful
collection of contemporary works for flute and guitar including a new transcription
of American composer Charles T. Griffes' "The White Peacock." This piece,
originally written for piano in 1915 and later scored by Griffes for full
orchestra, was transcribed and arranged by Mike Coates for flute, guitar
and bassoon -- this recording features guest artist Russell Peterson on
bassoon. Also, contains lovely piece by Debussy and Rodrigo.

Oh,
no, Maria. No. Ready or not the "composer's version" of the
now overly familiar score has arrived, courtesy of Bernstein disciple Kenneth
Schermerhorn and the first-rate Nashville orchestra.

17
Themes for OckodektetComposers:
Jeff KaiserPerformers:
The Jeff Kaiser OckodektetpfMentum Jeff
Kaiser is a composer, trumpet player, conductor, and private music instructor
residing in the cozy town of Ventura, CA, where he does the lion's share
of his performances and turns out really nicely packaged CDs that are as
funky to listen to as they are Zen-like to contemplate. Think big band
on acid on one of Dizzy's most innovative nights.

Symphonies
No 1 and 2Composer:
Serge BortkiewiczConductor:
Martyn BrabbinsLabel:
Hyperion - #67338 Audio
CD (October 8, 2002) ASIN:
B00006GO65518 Frankly,
I never heard of the guy until this CD appears in my mailbox but if you
like fiery late Romantic Russian music that stirs the soul this one
will get your mojo working .